Climate change is undoubtedly caused by human activity. One of the largest contributors is the construction industry. Yet there is a need for development of infrastructure globally. To fundamentally change the construction industry there is a need for collaborations between several actors from both public and private sector. Such collaborations are often challenged by different organizational cultures, leading to issues of trust and communication.

This is a study of relational leadership in the context of sustainability and complex collaboration projects. Situated in the design phase of a state funded road building project in Sweden. The study contributes with new knowledge on how leadership for sustainability is practiced and where it emerges. In line with relational leadership studies, it also discusses how the surrounding context influences the leadership. Applying this relational, social constructivist perspective on leadership the study concludes that leadership for sustainability is a relational process where direction is found through sustainability focused dialogues where problems are constructed and made sense of.

The study however also acknowledges the importance of creating a space for action to further develop such solutions. For this action space to be enabling, dialogues are needed where existing preconditions are re-evaluated in relation to collected learnings about problems. Otherwise, there is a risk for the action space to be formed by previous decisions, project boundaries and personal interpretations that hinder a sustainable change. Finally, the dynamic between teams in the collaboration is believed to be an important contextual factor that influences leadership for sustainability. For teams to engage in discussions needed, trust is needed in the collaboration, which is challenging when teams come from different local-cultural historical contexts. Hence, a focus on improving trust in collaboration and build a common context is an equally important part of leadership for sustainability.